What do mystic men of the Orient know about
warm-blooded Americans, dead in love? I might kiss the air until I was
blue in the face,--nothing to it,--but let me kiss you, and we are both
aquiver, and--'
"'Rodney Carter, don't you dare say such things,' she cried furiously.
'It is insulting. Besides it has nothing to do with it. It isn't so
anyhow. And what is more--'
"'There's nothing mysterious about us. Let the old Chinesers pad
around in their bare feet and naked souls if they want to. We are
children of light, we are, creatures of earth, earthly. We're--'
"'Oh, I can't argue with you, Rod,' she began confusedly.
"'I don't want you to. Kiss me. One kiss, Emily mine, will confound
the whole united order of Maudlin Mystics. I am willing to risk all
the anathemas contained in an inharmonious sphere for one touch of your
lips. Go ahead with your sacred doctrine of universal and spiritual
imbecility, but soften its harshness with worldly, physical,
sin-suggesting kisses, and I am in tune with the infinite.'
"Then Emily broke the engagement, and Rodney, after relieving himself
of more heretical opinions of spiritual simplicity and mystic madness,
stalked unmelodiously away, slamming her door, and his own after it.
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